Like Sin City, this takes its material from a "graphic novel" by Frank Miller, and in turn it takes from the film treatment of that one — or to be more precise, director Zack Snyder takes from director Robert Rodriguez — the same, or similar, unnatural light, "virtual" backgrounds, coarse-grained …
None other than Jacob and Wilhelm, not yet world-famous folklorists, merely ghostbusting con men, whose ruses are not state-of-the-art magic circa the early 19th Century, but rather state-of-the-art FX circa the 21st. When they are recruited by the occupying French army, however, to investigate a case of missing children (a …
Explorers of an underground river in Transylvania -- "the Amazon of underground rivers" -- find more than they bargained for: computer-cartoon parasitic flying amphibians. In the dark and under the water, the action is all but unfollowable, and outside of Piper Perabo's desperate last moments on a sheer rock face, …
The writing and directing debut of Ol Parker is a lightweight love-at-first-sight lesbian romantic comedy about the instantaneous connection between a bride midway up the aisle and the nuptial flower arranger. Piper Perabo and Lena Headey are attractive, sympathetic figures from any sexual perspective; and Matthew Goode as the bridegroom …
Comic-book Kipling: Mowgli the Wolf-boy, the Black Jungle, the Monkey City. The initial half-hour or so is a well-crammed phantasmagoria of eye-widening images: the runaway tandem of horses dragging a burning remnant of an exploded buckboard through the jungle; the nose-to-nose staring contest between child and panther; the simian-infested sacred …
The empire of Niflheim is determined to steal the sacred Crystal from the kingdom of Lucis in this Japanese computer-animated science fantasy film based on the video game. Director: Takeshi Nozue. Writer: Takashi Hasegawa. Stars: Aaron Paul, Lena Headey, Sean Bean.
Contrived shit doesn’t get much nuttier. In the not-so distant future, a white, upper-class family plans on spending the Purge — a ‘countrywide catharsis’ where, for one 12-hour period every year, murder is decriminalized — in the safety of their steel-plated mansion. How do you go wrong with a foolproof …
Waspish little English comedy of no lasting sting. At best, it grants us Jeanne Moreau in her first big star turn in eons. With her growling-cello voice, her carroty hair, her putty face, her tentlike outfits, she blows into stuffy suburban Croydon (ca. 1959) as a gust of cosmopolitan fresh …
Time-travel fantasy, with the bare minimum of snags and snarls in logic. A struggling London actor (Douglas Henshall), self-described as a "Marlon fucking Brando," sincerely regrets the infidelity and confession thereof -- the confession perhaps a bit more than the infidelity -- that came between him and his girlfriend of …
Remarkable for taking a lurid and ludicrous storyline — a federal prosecutor and aspiring politician plunges (reluctantly) into the world of high-priced escorts, even as the FBI goes after the very service he frequents — stocking it with a solid cast — Patrick Wilson as a twitchy, tortured Paul Newman, …